ILOILO City – The government’s plan to send police officers and local government personnel to households to search for individuals afflicted with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with mild symptoms is like tracking down a criminal.
This was Philippine National Police (PNP) chief General Archie Gamboa’s assertion on the proposed controversial initiative.
“This plan is like locating a criminal and when you have located one, you have to find his accomplices,” Gamboa said.
He was in this city yesterday for a visit at the Police Regional Office 6 headquarters in Camp Martin Delgado.
Earlier, Interior secretary Eduardo Año said the government will be visiting households to search for COVID-19 patients with mild symptoms so that they can be transferred to monitoring facilities to avoid the further spread of the virus.
This is in line with the government’s “Oplan Kalinga” program, which seeks to transfer COVID-19 patients whose homes are ill-equipped for home quarantine to temporary isolation facilities.
Human rights groups, however, warned against the proposal, saying it would “further facilitate state terror and police brutality in communities.”
Gamboa, for his part, explained that the PNP was going to replicate what Mayor Benjamin Magalong, had done in Baguio City.
He said the visit to houses of those suspected cases would also involve an interview which aims to gather information about all the contacts of the infected persons and the timeline of the encounters
“It is a cognitive investigation,” Gamboa added.
To date, Philippine health officials have so far confirmed 58,850 COVID-19 cases, including 1,614 deaths and 20,976 recoveries./PN
